


Landline

by javajunkie



Category: The Queen's Gambit (TV)
Genre: Beth harmon x Benny watts, F/M, Happily Ever After, Post-Series, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-11
Updated: 2020-11-11
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:27:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27501535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/javajunkie/pseuds/javajunkie
Summary: Benny is done with Beth Harmon.  (Except, he absolutely is not.)   Post-series.  Beth/Benny
Relationships: Beth Harmon/Benny Watts
Comments: 37
Kudos: 716





	Landline

**Author's Note:**

> I have fallen way far into this rabbit hole. But at some point I will run out of ways for them to reunite, right? Until then, I hope you enjoy these!

Benny is done with Beth Harmon. Yeah, he helped her out in Russia, but that was different. It was the _Russians_. Helping her out was practically him doing his patriotic duty. But, now the game is over and she's off taking her third or fourth curtain call, giving as many interviews as a Beatle, and he's back to forgetting her. Beth Harmon had given him more grief in the few months they had spent together than the rest of his twenty-some years. Good riddance.

Except, he still reads every article. Listens to every interview. When he goes into his front closet he sees that damn air mattress, and suddenly he’s thinking about the one time they made love on it instead of his bed, laughing when it popped a leak. He doesn’t even know why he has the mattress anymore, but he doesn’t throw it away. Just like he doesn’t throw away the scarf that she used to wear in her hair. He found it under his bed a week after she left and stuffed it in the top of his dresser. Each time he took it out it got pushed further back into the drawer, suppressed much like his own feelings.

“You could call her,” Cleo offers one afternoon. She says it casually between puffs of her cigarette, like it isn’t an entirely preposterous suggestion. Which, it is. 

“I don’t want to call her.”

Cleo tips her head back and sighs, “Why are men so dimwitted?” He doesn’t know who she’s supposed to be talking to. It’s only them in the apartment. She sets him with a look and says, “You want to call her, Benny.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Yes, you do. Because you love her. And when you love someone, you _always_ want to call.” She takes another drag of her cigarette, flicking her bangs away from her eyes. “Look, I’ll be the first to say I always thought you were too in love with yourself to love anyone else. In fact, I _have_ said that. But, Benny, darling, you are in love.”

He begins to say that she is wrong, but he can’t finish the sentence. Instead he goes into Cleo’s purse and pulls out her pack of cigarettes. As he lights himself one, Cleo says, “You better replace that.”

“Even if I did love her, it doesn’t matter,” Benny says, taking a quick drag from the cigarette. “She could have called all this time. She hasn’t.”

“What is it you said last time you two spoke just by yourselves?” Cleo asks slowly. “Don’t call again?”

“I wasn’t in the wrong. She drank herself in a stupor and then just thought I would be there for her like nothing had happened.”

“It’s complicated,” Cleo concedes. “But, are you really happy sitting here _not_ calling her?”

* * *

Nearly 700 miles away in Lexington, Kentucky, Beth sits at her kitchen table with Jolene and asks her, “You’ve been in love, right?”

Jolene looks over at her with surprise. “Well, I sure as shit better be considering I’m about to get married.”

Beth grins. The lawyer at Jolene’s office had actually left his wife, as promised, and he and Jolene were set to be married later that year.

“I thought I was before,” Beth says, wrapping her hand around a mug of tea. It’s orange pekoe, one of the rare traditions she kept of her childhood. “And maybe I was. How do you know?”

Jolene takes a deep breath. “I guess you just sort of do. Like you know those chess moves of yours.”

Beth immediately shakes her head and says, “No, chess I understand. This doesn’t make sense.”

Jolene leans back in her chair, a smile ghosting on her mouth, and she says, “Who are you in love with?”

“It’s no one,” Beth says quickly.

“No, see you don’t get to pull that shit with me,” Jolene says, leaning forward. “You forget that I know you. So, spit it out.”

There’s no use fighting Jolene, so Beth tells her, “Benny Watts. But, I don’t even know if I actually love him.”

“If you have to ask the question, the answer is yes,” Jolene says sagely. “So, this Benny guy. Does he have a phone?”

“He does,” Beth says, taking a sip of tea. 

“I don’t see the problem then.”

“We have a sort of complicated past,” Beth says. “And it seemed like maybe things were getting better after Russia, but I haven’t heard from him.”

“Well then, how about you pick up the phone yourself and call him?” Beth isn’t convinced, and Jolene says, “It’s 1969, Beth. It’s time to woman up.”

* * *

Over the ensuing week, Benny and Beth both consider calling the other and both decide against it. They make excuses. Compelling ones, too. They create entire arguments for why calling was not the right move and, besides, if the other one really wanted to talk to them so damn much, they could pick up the phone.

And then one night they both decide to call, except Beth does it five seconds sooner and Benny starts with surprise when the phone rings below his hand. He picks up the phone and says, “Hello?”

“Benny.”

“Beth.”

In that moment, they both forget everything they had planned on saying, but Beth can hear the way his breath quickens and so can he . Benny can almost picture her twisting the phone cord around her finger in the nervous way she did. There is something oddly intimate about being on a landline, listening to someone else breath, and it has to be that which makes Benny say what he says next. 

“You know, Cleo said something funny a few days ago,” Benny says. “She said I’m in love with you. Which is ridiculous.”

Beth has to catch her breath before she says, “It’s funny, my friend Jolene thinks I’m in love with you, too. It’s totally ridiculous.”

They talk well into the night, Beth bringing the phone over with her to the couch, stretching the cord nearly to its breaking point, and curls up against the arm of the couch. She falls asleep while they are still talking and wakes up to a knock on her door. The phone is off the hook and she places it back in the cradle, propping it on the end table. She doesn’t glance in the mirror as she walks by, but wishes she had when she opens the door and sees him.

“Benny?”

He answers with a kiss, his arms winding around her waist. When they pull apart she sees how tired he looks, but his eyes are bright.

“Did you drive all night?”

“There wasn’t a flight until this afternoon,” he says, smoothing her hair away fro her face. “I didn’t want to wait that long.”

Somehow, it seemed perfectly in character for Benny to decide on a dime to drive across the country. 

“So, you’re here.”

“Yeah, I am.”

Beth doesn’t hesitate before kissing him again, nudging the door shut behind him.


End file.
